5 Years Later...

5 years ago this week my husband and my 7 months pregnant self signed on the dotted line to buy this house.  Since then we've grown from 2 young newlyweds to 2 thirty-something parents of 3 little boys who renovated almost an entire house DIY style.  When I look back on it I can't quite believe we did it.

Here are some before's and afters of some the major renovations.

Kitchen:

Family Room Fireplace:

Living Room:

Master Bath:

Master Closet IKEA hack:

Office:

Boys' Bathroom:

Dining Room:

 Exterior:

It has been quite a ride.  I'm fairly certain the next 5 years will contain no pregnancies (truth!) and less renovations (big fat lie).

Plantation Shutters

So we finished the master bath a year ago and since then our choices have been to either shower in the dark or 'put on a show' for the neighbors since we have no window coverings.  It is finally time to get some decency.

Here is what it currently looks like:

We decided on plantation shutters because we needed privacy while maintaining good lighting.  We ordered them about 6 weeks ago and after going back and forth on designs I honestly can't remember with what we decided on.  I guess we'll wait and see for them to be installed later this week!

In the meantime below are some plantation shutters in bathrooms that served as inpiration.

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Then in the process of looking for shutters in the bathroom I stumbled upon this picture of the shutters in the living room and now I'm wondering if this is my solution to updating the window treatments in the living room?  

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My credit card is rolling its eyes at me. 

Outdoor Love

I'm done with this cold, fall-like weather and ready to throw open the windows and spend lazy afternoons on the deck.  Well maybe lazy afternoons aren't really a reality just yet withe 3 boys but one thing that is true is that they sleep so much better after a day spent outdoors!  The slideshow below are some of the things I'm eying to spruce up our deck:

Outdoor Love by mlinds on polyvore.com

Dining Room

Back to Operation Dining Room.  I definitely got side tracked with the living room.  While waiting the 4 days it took to get the drapes back from the seamstress we jumped into the living room.  So then the poor drapes sat on our dining room table for a month.

Finally, they're up.  I bought four 96" Woodland drapery panels from West Elm and had them hemmed to 91" so that I could hang them floor to ceiling and fill the side walls with fabric.  

The before (crazy color combination with sparkles, awful floors, silly light fixture)

The during (dark and stuffy):

Done!  I like that the drapes hung higher and wider on a beefier rod (snicker snicker) makes the room feel bigger and fresher.

Pretty, fluid pattern.

Next up is to reupholster the dining room chairs with a fresher fabric but I'm thinking I shouldn't bother until the boys are older.  Who am I kidding, boys will always be walking messes :)

Living Room Reveal

So it is 95% complete because we still can't find the crown molding for the door header to match what is already there.  Bummer.  So ignore the lack of crown on the door headers.

In the meantime because I have the patience of a 5 year old I'm going to go ahead and show you the almost finished product.  We love it.  I'd be lying if I said it didn't kick our butts and even required a tetanus shot at one point but in the end it was worth it.  That said I don't ever need to lay a hardwood floor or do a wainscot wall treatment ever again.  Crossed off my DIY bucket list with a Sharpie.

Let's take a step back and look at where we started.  Ridiculous color.  Unfinished, way too formal crown molding, windows that leaked and housed carpenter ants, ruined hardwood floors and terrible lighting.

Then I told you that I was inspired by Linda's gorgeous foyer.  I wanted to make this:

Look like this:

So we busted our butts and came up with this:

 

Sean isn't happy with the L Cap piece at the top and mentioned ripping it out and redoing it.  He was serious.  No friggin' way are we doing any of this process again unless he has found some renovating elfs to come do it for us while we sleep.  In which case I would ask if they had any siblings who also did landscaping.

A gratuitous backside shot of the room.  Still need to figure out the piano placement.

Love me some nail head trim.

I love how much brighter the room feels with all the white woodwork and by swapping the over sized love seat with 2 tailored chairs.  I still need to figure out the window treatments but the old ones work for now.

Pretty chairs.  A mom of 3 boys needs some pretty in her life.

Love this HomeGoods lamp find of my mom's.

Bookshelf styling including some art from each of my super talented parents:

So there you have it.  The living room that kicked our butts.  It wasn't terribly expensive (actually this was a relatively inexpensive makeover) or challenging skill-set wise.  I think what made it so difficult is the number of steps in the process.  Oh, and the dust.  The dust can drive a Type A person insane.

Check back soon and hopefully we can get this last 5% done!

Shared with: Between Naps On The Porch

Elusive Crown Molding

Any advice on what to do when you can't find crown molding to match the crown already in the room?  We bought it 5 years ago from Home Depot so I would have thought it was standard but we've struck out at Home Depot, Lowes and our local lumber yard.  The room is done except for the crown above the new door headers and it figures that we can't find it anywhere!  On the hunt...

Wainscot Sneak Peak

Extreme DIY'ing yesterday.  My romantic husband decided to surprise me and took the day off of work and spent 15 straight hours measuring, cutting and nailing up the rest of the trim for the wainscot.  Seriously in my book that is probably the most romantic thing he could have done for our anniversary week.

Our house is disgusting.  Saw dust, spackle dust and tools everywhere.   We decided enough was enough and put a hard stop in front of us by scheduling a cleaning crew to come make the house shine...the following day.  That meant that after Sean finished up his beautiful carpentry at 10 PM it was time for my shift to begin of filling the rest of the seams, sanding, priming, painting, etc.

Tip for a wall treatment like this - prime and paint as much as you can before you install.  For example rolling a coat of the white paint on the wall before we put up the woodwork saved me a ton of time.  I may or may not have been congratulating myself outloud at 3 AM for doing that in advance.  Don't judge, I was punchy.

This picture was taken just after I finished with the first coat of paint...at 5 AM.  Ignore the poor quality and poor lighting...I couldn't muster the strength to walk the 10 ft to get my real camera and instead settled for my phone.  The kids got up at 6 AM and I leave for work by 7:30 AM.  Needless to say I am hurting today.  But I will go home to a clean and (except for the additional coats of paint needed) completed living room!